Quake hits off Cayman Islands

(CNN) -- A 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck Tuesday off the Cayman Islands, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The 6.2-mile deep quake hit at 9:23 a.m. ET, 40 miles from George Town, Cayman Islands, the USGS reported. George Town, the capital, is on the western shore of Grand Cayman Island.

There were no immediate reports of injuries in the three-island chain in the Caribbean.

The U. K. territory of the Cayman Islands is about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which was devastated last week by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

Tuesday's quake struck about 32 miles (52 kilometers) east-southeast of Bodden Town in the center of the southern coast of Grand Cayman Island.

It caused shaking at the Pedro St. James National Historic Site, about a 10-minute drive from Bodden Town, said Sonya Hydes, the gift shop manager.

"There was quite a bit of shaking," she said.

Hydes said she called her husband after the shaking stopped to see if their house was affected. He told her that he felt the quake but that it did not damage their house.

There are reports that the quake toppled power lines in Bodden Town, said Kafara Augustine, a news producer for Cayman 27.

Augustine said she felt the shaking from within her office in central George Town. She and her colleagues quickly evacuated the building, seeking safety in the streets, she said. The two-story building did not suffer any damage and from what she could see, everything else seemed unharmed during the quake, she said.

The quake startled Davy Ebanks, general manager of the North Sound Club, a golf course on the Seven Mile Beach strip of western Grand Cayman Island. He said he was reading about the earthquake in Haiti on the Internet when he suddenly felt shaking.

"I just bolted," he said. "It was rocking and rolling pretty good."

The trembling knocked some picture frames off balance and sent some mannequins tumbling in the pro shop, but otherwise did little damage at the club, he said.

About 215 miles (346 kilometers) from the temblor in Cienfuegos, Cuba -- a city on the southern coast of the communist island -- residents said they felt nothing.

The Caymans are about 167 (268 kilometers) miles west of Jamaica and about 140 miles (240 kilometers) south of Cuba, according to the CIA World Fact Book.

CNN's Mark Bixler and Shasta Darlington contributed to this report.